RIGA IFF online: Beigas

Māris Maskalāns
The End
Beigas
LV
2024, 88’, lv
Age 18+

 

The dance of life and death, with humanity entering the fray. An artist, a zoologist, a nature scholar, and a sheep farmer working in the IT sector, who also happens to be an astronomy enthusiast, all view the demise of biological bodies differently. Forest carrion, larvae under tombstones, sheep in the barn, layers of feathers and bones, and shimmering green flies on decaying flesh – amidst all this is a human trying to understand their place in cosmology. In this grand tapestry of transformation, what is the human species: part of a cycle or more akin to superhuman?

 

Latvian new Gothic on the (un)avoidability of death and endings. Maskalāns (cinematographer of the grotesque Dreamland (2004) which was nominated for the best documentary at the European Film Awards) is one of the most distinguished nature documentarians and observers in the Baltics, and in his latest work provokes the viewer both with his imagery and existential and ethical questions. In this sensory and carnal metamorphosis detective story the viewer sees the part of life that is less visible or acknowledged, or it gets retouched – death, which occasionally opens up a rare cinematic experience outside the comfort zone. With endings and nature's "red in tooth and claw" nothing comes to an end – and that is exactly where this film begins.